By Steve Mera
At: www,phenomenamagazine.co.uk
Monday, 26 February 2018
Leaked Pentagon files reveal shocking details about secret UFO research and storage of an unknown metal
By Science Examiner Desk
The Pentagon agents secretly studied and researched about UFOs and their threats to our Earth, according to recent reports. Back in December, a report published in the New Times revealed that scientists in southern Nevada got a chance to study a piece of unknown metal which had some unusual properties. So, questions rose that did government scientists get a chance to study the secret UFO-like material or did UFO piece went to the UFO hunters.
Recently, the Pentagon reports revealed that some agents most probably the UFO hunters analyzed and tested those unknown metal believed to be a leftover piece of an alleged UFO crash that took place in 1947 at Roswell, New Mexico. The Pentagon papers citing the secret UFO research were written between 2007 and 2012. In 2007, Nevada Senator Harry Reid and a few colleagues secretly got the funding for an intense Pentagon study of unknown materials looking like flying saucers or UFOs.
The main aim of the secret funding was to move the UFO study beyond that 1947 Roswell crash incident. The Defense Intelligence Agency had given the contract of secret UFO research to a private organization named BAASS (Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies), headquartered at Bigelow Aerospace in North Las Vegas. For three years, BAAS collected and analyzed all UFO files and data on behalf of DIA, as revealed in those Pentagon files.
James Oberg, a former NASA employee, said that he knew that the unknown metal piece alleged to be that of a UFO was recovered by the UFO hunters and is not with the army or the US government. Oberg said, “The money went out of the Department of Defense to Robert Bigelow and he contracted the work out to some UFO groups to look for UFOs and who spent a lot of money retrofitting his buildings to store this material.”
The Pentagon files revealed that under Robert Bigelow’s direction, the UFO files were modified in the company’s headquarters so as to allow the storage of the unknown metal. Nick Pope, a former investigator of UFOs for the British Ministry of Defense also is of the notion that the broken parts of the Crashed UFO might have been taken by the UFO groups and said that he does not know these alloys and other materials were obtained. So, it is suspected the Bigelow Aerospace managed to get those UFO-related materials from civilian UFO research groups.
Talking Bob Lazar with Jeremy Corbell - Spacing Out!
Luis Elizondo Interview for the 2018 International UFO Congress
By UFO Congress
This is an exclusive interview of Luis Elizondo, the former head of a secret Pentagon project to investigate UFOs. The project was called the Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program (AATIP). An article on Dec. 16, 2017 in the New York Times revealing the program made worldwide headlines. Thus far, short media interviews are all Elizondo has participated in. In this exclusive interview, Elizondo answers questions from UFO Congress social media followers and friends.
See the entire 2018 International UFO Congress presentation, including a review of how this revelation came about, and insight from Nick Pope, who ran a similar UFO program for the UK's Ministry of Defense, at the UFO Congress Video-on-Demand page.
South Australia's X-Files: Curious Adelaide cracks open our most mysterious UFO cases
By Nicola Gage and Daniel Keane
It's a question many of us have asked ourselves: are we alone in the universe?
From flying saucers to balls of light rocketing through the sky, South Australia has had its fair share of reported UFO encounters.
One avid ABC reader has asked us to delve into the history of the state's major cases, as part of our Curious Adelaide campaign.
So we dusted off some of South Australia's oldest X-Files to find answers.
Nightmare on the Nullarbor
We'll start in the outback, where a traumatised family was allegedly lifted off the ground by aliens.
It was still dark in the early hours of January 20, 1988, when the Knowles family was driving along the remote Nullarbor Plain.
The seemingly mundane trip from Perth to Melbourne quickly turned to terror when they encountered an unidentified flying object that tormented them for 90 minutes.
A large glowing object "like a big ball" chased Faye Knowles and her adult sons Patrick, Wayne and Sean down the highway, before landing on their roof and plucking them into the air.
"It apparently picked the car up off the road, shook it quite violently and forced the car back down on the road with such pressure that one of the tyres was blown," a police spokesman told media at the time.
In a state of shock, Sean Knowles put his foot on the accelerator as his mother screamed but, according to reports, their voices distorted like time was slowing down.
"I wound down the window and I felt this thing on the roof... all of this smoke stuff started coming into the car, the car was covered in black stuff," Faye Knowles told reporters after the incident.
"It was a small light and all of a sudden it became big like this, like a big ball.
"We thought we were dying, then we got out the car and we hid behind a little tree and the bushes and it couldn't find us."
The family eventually made it to Ceduna and reported the bizarre events to police who took the report seriously, given the state of the car, which was dented and had dust over it.
The story made headlines around the world with sceptics and believers alike trying to make sense of what happened on that lonely stretch of road.
Flying saucers and lights in the sky
UFO reports in the state can be traced back to the beginning of the twentieth century but it wasn't until the early Cold War that they started appearing all over the place.
Rockets were a new invention, originally for military purposes, that made the stars seem closer than ever before.
It seems that, in an atmosphere of heightened political tension, people became spooked by strange lights in the sky.
UFO researcher Keith Basterfield said Port Augusta was home to one of the state's first sightings.
"Even in the beginning of the flying saucer era in 1947 when the whole thing took off, we had one of the earliest sightings in Port Augusta," Mr Basterfield said.
"Five metallic objects were seen by three people working at the Commonwealth railways there.
"Even the government astronomer — we had such a person at the time — couldn't explain that sighting."
Reports made the front pages of newspapers of strange objects sighted from Eyre Peninsula to the outskirts of Adelaide.
On January 22, 1954, The Bunyip newspaper reported three people had sighted a flying saucer over Gawler.
"As the object approached at terrific speed they could make out the perfect shape of a saucer — pure white," the report stated.
"It looked no bigger than an ordinary saucer because of its great height."
One case that still stumps Mr Basterfield took place outside the remote community of Kimba on the Eyre Highway on the night of February 4, 1973.
Four people in three separate cars all spotted it in a clearing they passed — an orange rectangle similar to an illuminated door in the scrub, with a strange figure standing inside.
Police were baffled, so Mr Basterfield and his team drove out to investigate.
"We had a look at the site, we took soil samples from the area, we had the samples analysed looking for something unusual there," he said.
"That's not your typical flying metallic saucer but it's a very, very strange set of observations by a group of independent people.
"And we never did get to the bottom of it."
Another strange happening, in South Australia's Flinders Ranges in 2006, was witnessed by scores of people many kilometres apart.
Service station owner John Teague was outside pumping tyres when something plummeted through the sky.
"For some reason I glanced up and I yelled, 'look at that Lloyd', and this thing was hurtling through the air," he said.
"Looked like [it was] about the size of a baseball just flying through the air rapidly."
Mr Teague made such a noise that a group across the street looked up and saw the same thing.
"Then all of a sudden, and this was quite some time later, a huge sonic boom rattled through the air," he said.
"I thought it might have been a meteor going through the air in daylight, I didn't know what it was, maybe space junk coming back.
"But it would have had to be pretty big for space junk for it to be that size way up in the air."
To this day, what it was remains a mystery.
So how common are UFO sightings in South Australia?
GIF: Lee-Anne Peters filmed this footage of what authorities later said was an aircraft over Tasmania
South Australia's Astronomical Society's Paul Curnow said it's pretty common.
"The average city person doesn't look at the sky very often and sometimes when they do look up and see something strange, they can't really explain it," Mr Curnow said.
Late last year, the Pentagon admitted that up until 2012, it had been running a secret investigation into UFOs, but it seems that Australia's aerospace and security agencies don't keep detailed records or data on UFO sightings — at least, that's what they told us.
When Curious Adelaide phoned SA Police to check whether it could shed some light on the matter there was a moment of silence, before some laughter.
Senior constable Mick Abbott did however make the following comment:
"If you stay on the line, I'll transfer you to agents Mulder and Scully from our X-Files division."
When the ABC contacted the CSIRO there was a similar reponse.
According to Paul Curnow, it's still common to get several dozen to hundreds of UFO reports each year in South Australia alone.
But what's being reported is changing, he told us, with fewer sightings of flying saucers hovering over the land.
"Probably for every 10 cases you get, nine can be explained in mundane terms," Mr Curnow said.
The majority of cases, unfortunately for those hoping for an encounter with the extra-terrestrial, have a logical explanation.
"Quite often people report a little silver dot in the sky [and it] turned out to be an aircraft," he said.
"A lot of these things like planes, satellites, planets, even searchlights sometimes, can all add to what people are reporting."
So is the truth really out there?
UFO researcher Keith Basterfield was based in Adelaide when the Knowles family incident occurred.
"My first thought was 'here is a very interesting story that we can carry out some hard science on'," he said.
"We've got a vehicle, we've got reported unusual dust on a vehicle, we've got a number of witnesses.
"If we could document all that we'd have a very strong case for saying something unusual occurred."
However, the conclusion he reached was far from the extra-terrestrial encounter portrayed by the media.
The car had been forensically tested with nothing unusual found, and Mr Basterfield had a more ordinary explanation for the bright light.
"We figured it was potentially a mirage caused by a temperature inversion that night," he said.
That kind of mirage can make lights a long way in the distance curve over the Earth's horizon and appear to be much closer than they actually are.
"Although they saw the light approaching them, they never saw the [source of the] light reach them, so it never actually got to them," Mr Basterfield said.
"It disappeared at that point in front of them so we figured a mirage of a track light several kilometres away could explain that."
He also had a simple explanation for the car jumping and vibrating.
"If a tyre explodes under your car going at really high speed you're going to get vibrations, you're going to get brake dust entering the vehicle," Mr Basterfield said.
"It was simply a case of misunderstanding, of seeing a light in the distance, a tyre bursting and those things had built up into a story."
While it seems science offers an explanation for many of the sightings in the state, you'll need to decide for yourself whether it's more tale than truth.
Of Space Aliens and the Catholic Faith
Ancient relief with Christian crosses and an alien-like person on wall of the fourth-century Samtavro Orthodox Church in Mtskheta, Georgia. (Radiokafka/Shutterstock)
By Sabrina Arena Ferrisi
On Dec. 16, 2017, reports were released by the U.S. Department of Defense of a possible UFO-sighting 13 years earlier. Apparently, in mid-November 2004, two American fighter pilots spotted and filmed an unidentified flying object off the coast of San Diego. The object they saw was about 40 feet long and looked like a giant Tic-Tac. It appeared suddenly at 80,000 feet, then descended toward the ocean and hovered at 20,000 feet, before dropping out of radar range.
There is no explanation for what these two fighter pilots saw and filmed. But the Church has plenty to say, theologically, about the possibility of life in outer space.
“There is no official teaching,” said Father Terry Ehrman, assistant director for the Center for Theology, Science and Human Flourishing at the University of Notre Dame. “But there has been speculation within the Church since the Middle Ages. In the 15th century, people began to ask if there was a plurality of worlds.”
Since 1582, the Vatican has had — with some continuity — an astronomical observatory. With regards to the subject of alien life, it held conferences on this matter in 2009, 2011 and 2014.
Pope Francis said, during a morning Mass in May 2014, “If an expedition of Martians arrives and some of them come to us and if one of them says: ‘Me, I want to be baptized!’ what would happen?”
He said that even if these hypothetical beings were “green men, with a long nose and big ears, like children draw … who are we to close doors?”
The theological questions that emerge on the subject of possible alien life are many: If there is life on other planets, is it intelligent life? If men and women were created in the image and likeness of God, what is the image of God? Would intelligent life on other planets also be in the image of God?
“But the real question is [about] redemption: What do we do with sin? Will extraterrestrials sin? Or would they always be good? We can’t presume that, just because we sinned, all intelligent life would. Have aliens fallen? Is sinfulness intrinsic to intelligent life? Is Original Sin just for terrestrials or also for aliens?” said Father Ehrman.
Finally, theologians wonder if Jesus’ incarnation was just for humans or for life throughout the universe — including aliens. Could there have been multiple Incarnations?
“Scripture is written as though we are the only species,” noted Father Ehrman. “These are questions for which we don’t have answers. But it is good to think about: What is my relationship to God? What does this have to do with me?”
Scientific Facts
The question of life on other planets brings up some harsh scientific facts: The chance of life existing on another planet is extremely remote.
According to Angelo Stagnaro, a Catholic journalist with graduate degrees in biological anthropology, the existence of life on another planet is virtually impossible.
“Now, don’t get me wrong. The Church would be happy to have alien life. And we can never limit God’s power. I would be the first booster for alien life. I love Star Trek, but when you crunch the numbers, it’s impossible.”
Scientists know that in order for life to appear on Earth, many conditions needed to exist in a precise and highly timed order. If any one of these factors did not take place, life could not have occurred.
“In order for life to take place, a planet has to be in what is called a ‘goldilocks zone,’” said Father Robert Spitzer, a Jesuit who was the president of Gonzaga University and who founded the Magis Center. “It can’t be too close to the sun or it will burn, or too far because it would be too cold. It has to be a rocky planet and not a gas planet. It must have a magnetic core, like the Earth, so that it can create a magnetosphere which protects the planet from the UV rays of the sun.”
Stagnaro has written about what he calls the “Shem Equation,” regarding 76 factors that need to occur for life to take place on a planet. The chances of these events happening are, according to Stagnaro, “astronomically impossible and intellectually untenable.”
The discovery of thousands of exoplanets in the last couple of years has, of course, reignited the question of life in outer space.
“Some say that there could be 1 trillion exoplanets. I favor the smaller number of 100 billion exoplanets. Any of these planets could have bacterial life. But we still can’t explain how the transition is made from nonlife to life on any planet, from amino acid to cell life,” said Father Spitzer.
Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago, with bacterial life appearing 3.8 to 3.9 billion years ago.
“But how life started on Earth, nobody knows,” said Father Spitzer.
Aliens With Souls
Catholic theologians are not just interested in the question of intelligent life appearing on other planets, but if those intelligent beings have a soul. Some, like Father Spitzer, contend that higher intelligence is actually the sign of being ensouled.
“If there is any other intelligent life in the universe that can do the things we do, they would have to have a transphysical soul,” he said.
Father Spitzer contends that, about 70,000 years ago, human beings suddenly made huge advancements in civilization: They began burying their dead, doing math and painting in caves.
“Before that, from 300,000 to 75,000 years ago, our ancestors were basically eating bananas and cracking rocks. But, suddenly, they became civilized. My thought is that: 70,000 years ago, our ancestors got a soul. The real Adam and Eve became ensouled,” said Father Spitzer.
He explains that renowned thinkers, like Noble Prize-winning scientist Sir John Eccles, Rhodes scholar and cognitive scientist David Chalmers, and logician Kurt Godel all believed that the conceptual ideas that human beings have cannot be explained by physical processes alone and that consciousness cannot be reduced to the brain alone.
“We have a transphysical soul. It causes us to be able to do math without algorithms,” said Father Spitzer. “We have math intuitions that are free of rules. We have conceptual ideas that are not experienced in the outer world.”
If aliens did exist and were able to come here, according to Father Spitzer, that kind of higher intelligence could only take place because these aliens were themselves ensouled.
“They would know about religion. They would have a sense of infinity,” he said. “We would have to find them, catechize them and tell them about Jesus and baptize them.”